


Denial

by Alys_Brauer, TAFKAB



Series: Chasing Stars [4]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: AU, Amanda's got more wisdom than she gets credit for, Arguments, Gen, Grumpy grumpy Leonard McCoy, M/M, Snotty arrogant Spock, Teen Angst, Vulcan educational system, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alys_Brauer/pseuds/Alys_Brauer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: Leonard and Spock dislike one another stubbornly, despite everything Amanda can do.





	

Leonard McCoy hated flying.

From the moment he set foot on the shuttle up to the Vulcan ambassadorial courier, from the moment he felt the shaking of the retrorockets revving up and preparing to fire, he hated flying. Hated the terror of liftoff; hated the knowledge that they could fall out of the sky like a stone if anything went wrong. Hated docking or undocking, waiting in terror, listening to every hiss and clunk and wondering when his lungs would start gasping for lack of atmosphere. Hated knowing space debris could wreck their hull and make everybody aboard die horribly in seconds-- blood boiling, eyeballs freezing. Hated the sleek little courier with its too-hot interior and its rock-hard beds and its even more terrifying warp drive. Hated the Vulcan family, especially the baby hobgoblin. 

He even hated his daddy, who was calm and unshakable through it all. 

His parents left to observe the launch, but Leonard sat down and pulled up his account on the computer, which recognized his Terran speech and converted itself at once to accommodate him, Vulcan characters vanishing, replaced by the familiar Latin alphabet. 

They were to live in Shi’Kahr, Vulcan’s capital, located on the continent of Na’nam. It was not far from Vulcan’s Forge, one of the nastier places on any M-class planet yet cataloged. McCoy scowled; that was originally an atomic warfare site, if he remembered his galactic history texts correctly. What about the half-life of all that radioactivity? It might have been a few thousand years, but that wasn’t necessarily enough to ensure human safety.

The whole place looked awful. It was dusty, and it was red. The rocks were red, the mountains were red, the canyons were red, the sky was red. If there’d been any goddamn oceans, the oceans would’ve been red. But no, there wasn’t enough groundwater on Vulcan to shake a stick at. It was a wonder the damned place could support any life at all. And yet, it did. At present it supported several billion Vulcans along with an atypically nasty host of poisonous flora and murderous fauna. It was like you took the Australian outback and made it into a whole planet. 

“Sixty seconds to launch.” A calm voice from the PA intruded on his studies.

He considered going out to see the Earth for one last time. As far as he knew, the baby hobgoblin-- Spock-- was up in the cockpit, no doubt learning how to fly the damn deathtrap. Probably everyone was there, his mother and father with them.

He slipped out and went to stand by a viewport, staring at the receding blue globe that held everything he gave a damn about. His home, his room. The animals. Most of his things; he hadn’t been able to bring more than a few of his books, all in the form of computer files, and a small selection of clothes. His friends would go on without him now. Even the girl he had a crush on. It was all gone. As he watched, all of it receded to a pale blue disc, then a dot like a star-- and then it vanished as the ship surged to warp.

He stood there sweating, with his hands clenched to fists and his teeth sunk in his lip. A tear welled over and trickled down his cheek, and his fists shook.

“Is this the emotional display known as weeping?” Spock stood there in the doorway, a silent shape in a dark robe, staring at him. 

“I’m not crying!” Leonard snarled, hastily dashing the moisture from his cheek. “There’s dust in my eye, damn it.”

“Fascinating.” The tone… _insinuated._

Leonard’s temper snapped. “Let’s get something straight, you pointy-eared piece of misery. I don’t like you any better than you like me. We both know you’ve got ice water in your veins instead of blood, and where I come from, that’s a lot worse than feeling a little homesick. So you just keep your ugly face out of my sight unless you want to learn how to eat applesauce through a straw.”

Spock considered him for a moment before speaking. “Vulcan gravity is approximately 1.4 times Terran standard. You will find that even Vulcan children half your height are far stronger than you, and many are trained in the martial arts from an early age. Confront one with violence and he will, if I may quote a Terran saying, “jerk a knot in your tail.” 

“You’re welcome to try it, if you think you can.” Leonard spread his stance for stability and faced the Vulcan square on, fists knotted. Spock raised a brow at him and made no move to engage.

“A highly illogical response.”

“Leonard, there you are.” The hobgoblin’s mother appeared behind him. Leonard quickly dropped his fists and straightened, but he didn’t release the Vulcan boy’s gaze, giving him a steady stare. _Next time I won’t back down._

“Your father and I were discussing the need for you to keep current in your lessons. The same is true for Spock. There’s a research facility at the end of the corridor with an extra terminal in it; please feel free to accompany us.” He knew enough to recognize the thinly-disguised order.

“Yes, ma’am.” Leonard fell in behind her, glaring a hole in the back of Spock’s head. He couldn’t understand how Amanda managed not to sweat right through her heavy robes and ridiculous hair-wrap. He was already soaked and he’d only been on board for half an hour!

After another half-hour, he was sweating for real, embroiled in the most fiendishly savage academic diagnostic examination he’d ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. Spock sat near him, working on a mathematical problem Leonard couldn’t even begin to classify, much less solve. Something to do with Hilbert Space? Leonard grimaced and applied himself to his own work; there was a time limit.

Amanda tallied his results when he finished, studying them. Leonard fidgeted, defiant. 99th percentile across the board back home wasn’t going to do him much good on Vulcan, that was obvious.

“Your results are very promising, Leonard. I’ve never seen such a high score in organic chemistry or biological sciences from someone your age,” Amanda smiled. “But your history and linguistics studies will require a good deal of remedial work, and your mathematical training can stand to improve as well, so you can take advanced physics.”

“With respect, ma’am, I want to be a doctor. Not a linguist, historian, logician, or computer programmer.” He cast a glower toward Spock. The boy never paused in his work.

“Doctors are scientists, Leonard.” She began to tap at her keyboard. “We’ll see if we can’t find a way to challenge you in all the fields you need, while still allowing you to pursue your chosen career path.”

In other words, suck it up and study whatever the computer said he was deficient in, according to some unreasonably high Vulcan standard. Grand. 

“Spock, I hope you will be willing to help Leonard with his Vulcan language studies. There may be times when he needs an interpreter, both linguistic and cultural.” She put a special note of motherly coercion in her tone, a universal constant on any planet, it seemed.

“As you wish, mother.” Spock never took his eyes from the mathematical model he was creating. 

Amanda tapped at the computer, which spat out a disk with his recommended lessons on it, and Leonard accepted them. “Thanks. I’d better get back to mom and dad.” 

He made a quick retreat, passing through the corridor with a brief glance through the viewport. Still nothing but the watery, wavery streaks of passing stars. It made his stomach churn, and his head swam with a sudden, hot flash of dizziness and nausea. Great. All he needed now was to get space-sick.

Leonard hastily retreated from the unsettling view of the warp bubble and fled into the tiny quarters reserved for him and his parents. Thank God it would only be about a week before they reached Vulcan. 

*****

Amanda Grayson watched Leonard McCoy leave the room, stepping carefully, very dignified. Perhaps it was her time on Vulcan; she wasn’t always so sensitive. But every line of him spoke of pain, grief, anger, misery. He despised Spock and he resented her; she could see it in his painfully polite manners toward her and his carefully veiled antagonism toward her son. Not so veiled, earlier; it had threatened to explode into violence, and that would be a very poor choice.

“Spock, save your work and talk with me,” she gave him her firmest no-nonsense tone, and he obeyed, punching a few keys. The model flared as it was saved, then vanished. He turned to her, presenting his smoothest bland face. She knew it well; perhaps he could already predict her chosen topic. Even if he could, she would speak her piece.

“I want you to be kind to Leonard, Spock. He’s going through a difficult time right now.”

Spock raised a brow-- a gesture that seemed quite eloquent but was, in practice, vague; he might hope she would take it to mean agreement, interest, doubt… she was too smart to trust in Vulcan ambiguity. 

“He has left his home, most of his family, all of his friends, and everything he has ever known behind him. He is uncertain of his future and his place on Vulcan, as a child would be expected to be-- and as a young man, he is resentful that an unwanted change has been forced on him. He is predisposed to dislike anyone associated with his relocation. He may act out. That means he may express his emotions inappropriately because they are too strong to be managed with his normal coping mechanisms.”

Spock nodded readily; this he evidently understood and agreed with. 

“Don’t take his anger personally.” Amanda stood up and laid her hand on Spock’s shoulder. “Give him time to work through it. You need a friend. The time will come when he realizes he needs one, too.”

“I have no need of friendship, mother.” Spock gave her a long-suffering look. If he could have seen himself, he would have been appalled. She tried not to laugh, but it only made him stiffen up, affronted. 

“Spock,” she murmured, and couldn’t resist smoothing his hair, knowing he would feel the love behind her amusement. “You are half-human. As my son, you have feelings; they have already surfaced. I think you will find that one of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”

Spock moved away from her fingers, which she had known he would, but her message had gotten through. “That is not so illogical,” Spock said carefully.

Amanda smiled and shook her head. “Not at all,” she agreed.


End file.
